Email is companies’ primary communication channel. The average employee sends 40 emails a day. In an increasingly digitalised world, optimising customer relationships in emails and making them more human has become a necessity.
As we know, customers’ decisions are not only based on factual information, but also on their emotions. So personalisation of relationships is one of the keys to success. Once the relationship is established, email is a very effective channel for exchanges between brand and consumer. Humanising customer relationships is even more necessary in sectors where they rely solely on digital channels. A good example is online sales: 2% of visitors to an e-commerce site become customers, compared to 40% of visitors to a physical shop!
Email is at the heart of the customer relationship strategy
Email is used at all key moments in the customer’s life. But it’s not enough to communicate with them, you need to personalise all exchanges as much as possible, in line with the context and their experience. In addition, thanks to marketing automation, it’s possible to do a great deal as far as display of communication campaigns in employee emails is concerned. It’s repetition that creates customer relationships and brand recall. Turning everyday emails into marketing emails will increase your customers’ loyalty.
1/Humanise the customer relationship in your emails
The aim here is to promote the customer experience. You have to succeed in highlighting the brand without distorting the relationship of trust established between your employee and their customer. For this, the email signature is an ideal space. It has a real human aspect, as it’s conveyed by the company’s best ambassadors, your employees. It’s a communication lever for the company’s self-promotion. Here are a few tips on how to make the most of email signature’s potential:
– The email signature, personalises and humanises the customer relationship
For an email signature to be readable and user-friendly, make sure it’s not overloaded with content. Prioritise personalised information to do with the employee, such as surname, first name, function and phone number. Adding a photo to the email signature is a real plus as it helps humanise the relationship. Finally, display information that encourages people to find out a bit more about your company (links to your social networks and website).
– The email signature’s design reinforces the company’s digital identity
The email signature is a quick way for your recipient to recognise your brand; it helps strengthen your digital identity. The signature’s design must be consistent with the brand’s graphic identity (at least one dominant colour, typography and logo).
– Accompany your signature with a marketing campaign. The footer is a direct marketing space. Prioritise clickable banners with links to landing pages. Vary your banners in line with events relating to your company’s news. To do this, create an annual editorial plan so that nothing is left to chance.
In short, you have to succeed in making everyday email more of an advertising tool without diminishing its qualities. It’s all in the dosage.
2/Disseminate news in your employees’ email signature s
Email campaigns on your employees’ emails are a great alternative to mass emailing. Their opening rate is much higher than the average opening rate of mass emails. The risk of an email being spammed is almost zero. This makes the campaign more visible. A tip to get you started: deduplicate your newsletters by sequencing them in several clickable email banners. By doing so, you save time producing content and multiply its impact. Then, giving a score to each of your leads’ actions (click on a banner, download a white paper, etc.) with a marketing automation tool enables you to better characterise your lead’s maturity.
Finally, using a centralised email signature synchronisation tool to harmonise and manage 100% of your company’s email signatures in just a few clicks enables you to automate your marketing campaigns easily.
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3/Put more collaboration into your email management
Managing customer or prospect emails internally is problematic. Email transfers often go on forever and this generates time-consuming content to analyse. Use of collaborative messaging enables you to centralise exchanges with your customers, and avoid creation of silos between the various stakeholders. This makes processing of information more efficient and responsive, so improving relations with your customers and prospects.
4/Develop your upsell sales by using a content strategy
Getting your brand known by opting for a content strategy is an ideal way of highlighting your various areas of expertise. A content strategy orientated towards content marketing and storytelling is ideal:
– invite recipients to download a white paper on your expertise,
– or to read an article on your blog,
– or listen to one of your employees during a business conference or podcast,
– invite your customers to recommend your offers and services to their friends.
You now know how to optimise the customer relationship in your emails, and make it a powerful ally in your efforts to improve quality, loyalty and customer upsell.